My Teaching Team (MTT)

MTT helps groups of teachers engage in the same ongoing, focused collaboration to enhance classroom interactions. However, it shifts the coaching aspect from one-on-one work between an external coach and a teacher to a teacher-led, group-based format. This format is designed to be used with schools’ established teaching teams, or professional learning communities (PLCs), and their meeting times.

My Teaching Team (MTT) is a suite of professional development resources and a model that guides teacher team meetings. It draws from the highly effective My Teaching Partner-Secondary (MTPS) individual coaching program, which demonstrated a positive impact on students’ achievement across grades and subjects and eliminated racial disparities in discipline practices.
MTT leverages the benefits that teaching teams can have by providing a clear structure for meetings, guidelines for collaboration, and curricular materials to help teachers discuss and see examples of teaching strategies that research indicates impact student learning, engagement, and relationships.

BENEFITS:

• Maximizes team meeting time by providing structure and focusing on teacher-student interactions that make a difference.
• Sparks new insights through a process of planning for classroom interactions, practicing them, reflecting on them in video footage, and sharing reflections with the group.
• Provides a ready-to-use, research-supported process, as well as materials.
• Empowers teams by encouraging a growth mindset and providing specific, actionable feedback while maintaining psychological safety.
• Provides flexibility for scheduling meetings at times convenient for the group and customization in choosing practices on which to focus.
• Provides teachers with highly relevant feedback, since coaching comes from peers who understand school-level constraints, resources, and needs.

The MTT Process

The MTT process consists of 5 key steps:

Focusing: Teams focus on one teaching topic at a time. They review and analyze third-party classroom footage as a group and discuss their experiences with the strategies.

Planning: Each teacher makes a plan to apply a teaching topic to their classroom, by trying something for the first time or expanding on an existing practice.

Practicing: Each teacher carries out their plan and video records their experience.

Reflecting: Teachers individually view their video and reflect on their classroom practices using prompts, as well as reflect on the experience with their teaching team.

Sharing: Teachers share short self-selected segments of their videos with their teammates to share successes, get feedback, and request support.

These practices mirror MTPS strategies found to maximize benefits for teachers and students.

“I enjoyed reflecting on my current practices to see where I can improve, and I also liked watching the video of the teacher in the classroom as it gave me new ideas.”

– Secondary Teacher

Related Research

Allen, J.P., Hafen, C.A., Gregory, A., Mikami, A.Y., and Pianta, R.C. (2015). Enhancing Secondary School Instruction and Student Achievement: Replication and Extension of the MyTeachingPartner-Secondary Intervention. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 8(4): 475–489. 

Gregory, A., Allen, J.P., Mikami, A.Y., Hafen, C.A., and Pianta, R.C. (2014). Effects of a Professional Development Program on Behavioral Engagement of Students in Middle and High School. Psychology in the Schools, 51(2): 143–163.